Rendered Unto Caesar, Perfectly

By

Heidi Waleson

April 8, 2013 5:14 p.m. ET

New York

The Metropolitan Opera's new "Giulio Cesare" (1724), which opened last week, is a Handel production in its Platonic form. The funny yet poignant staging (originally from the Glyndebourne Festival) of
David McVicar
; the conducting of Harry Bicket, who knows better than anyone how to make a modern orchestra understand baroque music; and a top-flight cast, including countertenor
David Daniels
and soprano Natalie Dessay in captivating performances, made for 4½ hours (including intermissions) of musical and theatrical bliss.

Mr. McVicar shifts the Caesar and Cleopatra story into the era of British imperialism and then plays with it. From the red-coated soldiers to a quasi-Bollywood dance number (Andrew George did the hilarious choreography), all the theatrical ideas worked, and their arc captured the opera's potent mix of wit and pathos. Robert Jones's sets and Paule Constable's lighting started with the baroque-theater perspective style, but dropped in sly additions; Brigitte Reiffenstuel's eye-catching costumes kept pace, with everything from harem regalia and a spangled black cocktail dress to hunting garb and a riding habit. Big scenes, like Cesare's aria "Va tacito," staged like a stalking dance, were full of sharp details (the villain Tolomeo offering poisoned refreshments) that added up; serious, intimate moments, like Cleopatra's heartbroken "Piangerò," pulled us into the character's emotion.

Giulio Cesare

The Metropolitan Opera

April 9, 12, 19, 22, 27, 30;

May 3, 7, 10.

As Cesare, Mr. Daniels demonstrated that he is the master of this repertoire. He works harder in the florid passages these days, but every phrase hit the mark beautifully, and he made Cesare amusingly pompous as well as heroic. Ms. Dessay was astonishing, singing with lyricism, sparkle and some outrageous vocal ornaments—projecting Cleopatra's emotional range from conniving flirtiness to abject despair, and dancing the Bollywood number and a hornpipe ("Da tempeste") full out.

Also arresting were the countertenor Christophe Dumaux—precise, vehement and as agile physically as he is vocally—in the role of Tolomeo, Cleopatra's nasty brother, and mezzo Alice Coote, eloquent as Sesto, who spends the entire opera swearing revenge for the murder of his father, the murdered Roman general Pompey. Mr. McVicar's treatment of Sesto's sometimes tedious obsession is an example of how cleverly he structured the evening; by the end, Sesto—with his monomaniacal mission achieved—has fallen into a near-catatonic state. Patricia Bardon took a while to warm up as Sesto's much put-upon mother, Cornelia; debutants Guido Loconsolo as the general Achilla and Rachid Ben Abdeslam as the servant Nireno ably completed the cast.

The evening was paced with superb sensitivity by Mr. Bicket, who also played harpsichord. Every moment was full of life, with a constant awareness of the underlying pulse of the music and the breath between the notes; the orchestra and continuo felt like a cushion supporting the singers. The wrenching duet that concludes Act I, as Cornelia and Sesto are about to be dragged off to separate prisons, sounded like a series of sighs; and after hearing (and seeing) this version of Cleopatra's victory aria, "Da tempeste," one could never imagine it as anything but a dance.

***

"The Gospel According to the Other Mary" by John Adams and
Peter Sellars,
recently given its New York premiere by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, approximates the structure of Bach's Passions but has neither the devotional fervor nor the narrative energy that make those works unforgettable. Instead, the "Gospel," which ran close to 3 hours with intermission, nearly as long as the "St. Matthew Passion," felt bloated and episodic.

Mr. Sellars, a longtime collaborator of Mr. Adams, compiled the libretto from existing poems and texts ranging from the Bible to the writings of the Roman Catholic activist Dorothy Day. This technique worked better for their Christmas oratorio "El Niño" than for their opera "Doctor Atomic"; in "Gospel," it sows narrative confusion.

Act I centers on the death and resurrection of Lazarus; Act II the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. The idea was to present the tale from a female perspective. Mr. Sellars offers a family group—Mary Magdalene, Martha and Lazarus, who run a refuge for homeless women—and slips back and forth between biblical and contemporary times. But the texts don't mesh, and the interpolated situations (women are jailed and beaten) and the fragments of character development (Mary Magdalene is a suicidal neurotic, Martha a passionate do-gooder) read more like random bits of political correctness and sexual politics than organic storytelling.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, led by Gustavo Dudamel, sounded harsh and percussive in Mr. Adams's aggressive score. Sometimes this was effective, as in the heaving orchestra at the death of Lazarus, or when the chorus represented the wordless menace of the crowd at Golgotha. The edgy, metallic sound of the cimbalom throughout the piece also added grittiness.

Quieter moments had more impact, if only because they came as a relief: a meditative setting of Primo Levi's poem "Passover," beautifully sung by tenor Russell Thomas (Lazarus), and the haunting music for a trio of countertenors (Daniel Bubeck, Brian Cummings, and Nathan Medley) who narrated the story. But much of the solo vocal writing was dull, and mezzos Kelley O'Connor (Mary Magdalene) and Tamara Mumford (Martha) plumbed their remarkable lower registers to little avail. (Jesus is a presence but not an individual singer; all his lines are sung by others.)

In Mr. Sellars's semi-staging, the singers were echoed in earnest interpretive movement by three dancers; everyone, including the chorus, performed odd, ritualistic gestures. Dunya Ramicova supplied the unattractive costumes—'70s-era separates, scrubs, peasant skirts, a blue hoodie for Mary—and James F. Ingalls blasted the stage with colored light. It was at one with the dated tone of the piece, a vein of unpersuasive social criticism that Mr. Sellars has been mining for too many years.

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